As reported by the Hollywood Reporter, Radcliffe would play Rockstar co-founder and president Sam Houser. The programme will focus on the drama between Houser and Miami lawyer Jack Thompson, who often sought restitution from Rockstar when violent crimes were committed by folks who also played Grand Theft Auto. Thompson was later disbarred in 2008 for 27 cases of professional misconduct.

The drama is going to be directed by Owen Harris, who directed that episode of Black Mirror where a woman builds an android replacement for her late husband, and that episode of Misfits where a dude wreaks havoc by telekinetically controlling dairy products.

Capcom has partnered with amusement park company Six Flags to make one of its roller coasters Monster Hunter-themed.

At California's Six Flags Magic Mountain, the roller coaster Goliath will bear a Monster Hunter theme from 28th March through 10th August.

So what does this entail, exactly? Probably not a lot. According to Capcom, Goliath will be "custom-skinned to resemble the game's flagship Gore Magala monster." Furthermore, there will be Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate demo kiosks at the nearby Cyber Cafe.

It may not seem like it at first glance, but Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is one of the most ambitious remasters we've played. The gap has never been so wide - porting from the almost eleven-year-old PSP hardware with its sub-PS2 spec is a gargantuan task and one that Hexadrive hasn't taken lightly. The talented Japanese development house has crafted a new engine with features rivalling any other modern renderer on the market today, with Square-Enix handling the spruced-up assets. The final product is a mixed bag, but the sheer number of technical accomplishments on hand is very impressive.

Let's get the basic stuff out of the way - the original 480x272 resolution of the game sees a sizable 17x bump to full 1920x1080 on both consoles. SMAA 1Tx handles anti-aliasing duties, resulting in a sharp and clean image throughout thanks to its robust temporal component, where information from past frames is blended into the present. Anisotropic filtering is also used to an acceptable degree preventing textures from becoming blurry at oblique angles. Hexadrive clearly understands the importance of image quality and has taken measures to ensure that the resulting image is always crisp and clean. Between the two console versions we have full image quality parity here - something which extends to every visual facet of the game.

Then we come to frame-rate - the HD version of the game retains the 30fps update of the original PSP title and does so with little difficulty. Both consoles turn in a stable 30fps with only minor frame-pacing issues interrupting the fluidity, particularly on Xbox One. While this may seem like a disappointment, the game was coded for 30fps originally and would not function properly at 60fps without overhauling core systems. According to one of the key programmers, the optimisation necessary to run at 60fps would have been minimal in comparison to the massive required overhaul of the game's underlying systems. It was simply beyond the scope of this project, which says a lot considering how many other changes were implemented.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1744754Wed, 25 Mar 2015 11:00:00 +0000BBC is making a drama about the creation of Grand Theft Auto

The BBC is making a 90-minute live-action drama about the inception of Grand Theft Auto.

Games and tech journalist Guy Cocker called it "a 90-minute feature-length drama focussing on the people behind its creation."

The programme will be part of the BBC's Make it Digital initiative as an effort to generate interest in tech amongst youngsters.

In the sweat mist of a late 90s techno hall, Tetsuya Mizuguchi got his first glimpse of what would become his life's work. The young Japanese designer, still fresh from the success of creating one of Sega's biggest arcade hits, found himself on a balcony at Zurich's Street Parade - an offshoot of Berlin's celebrated Love Parade - watching out over a crowd lost to the rhythm. "This DJ is playing, and 100,000 people are moving with the music. The sound changed, and the movement changed. I watched from the top, and was like 'wow, what is this?'" What if you could play this, Mizuguchi thought to himself. What if he could turn this into a game?

It's an idea that still occupies Mizuguchi when I meet him in Tokyo, where we walk away from the sweltering mob of Roppongi towards its quieter back-streets and to the boardroom of the mobile game studio where he's currently consulting. Mizuguchi talks in fractured, thoughtful English, taking his time as he gathers his words; I've always found talking to him like one of those slow, stilted yet utterly engrossing conversations that takes place in the early hours while your ears are still ringing from the nightclub you've left behind.

Music is vital to Mizuguchi, of course, from the electronica spine of games such as Rez and Child of Eden through to the rhythmic puzzles of Lumines. As a teen in Otaru, on Japan's northern isle of Hokkaido, Mizuguchi became besotted with music television in its infancy, tuning in to MTV to get lost in the sugar punk of Cyndi Lauper, XTC, and Duran Duran. The language of the 80s music video, with their detached sense of cool and angular neon, would leave an imprint; at university, while studying media aesthetics, Mizuguchi took a Sony beta pro editor to his room where he'd tinker with his own video remix of Art of Noise's Paranoima.

The gargantuan Japanese company saw an 89bn yen (£500m) profit for the third quarter ending 31st December 2014. That's up from a 26.4bn yen (£148m) profit during the same period last year.

The Game and Network Services division, which runs PlayStation, saw an operating income of 27.6bn yen (£155m) for the quarter. That figure was fuelled by an impressive 6.4m PlayStation 4 units shipped to shops and a whopping 147m game sales. The same period last year, 4.5m PS4s and 128m games were sold, and the Game and Network Services division saw a 12.4bn yen (£69m) operating income.

The PSone turns 20 tomorrow, 3rd December 2014, and to mark the occasion Sony has re-released a raft of its PlayStation adverts.

Let's start in 1995, when PSone came to Europe. The S.A.P.S video, below, suggested the new PSone was so powerful, it would turn the player into a monkey. The ad was slightly misleading in that the only game that actually caused this to happen was WipEout.

Things got a bit more serious with Sony's 1998 ad Double Life. Cheer up, chaps, it's just a game.

PlayStation maker Sony will not renew its sponsorship of football world governing body FIFA amid growing concern over corruption, according to multiple reports.

Sony has sponsored a raft of FIFA tournaments, including the World Cup, as part of an eight year deal worth £222m, but reports indicate it has decided to cut all ties with the embattled organisation when the contract expires on 31st December 2014.

According to Nikkei, the company prefers to spend its money on "completing structural reforms" this fiscal year, a comment that makes a degree of sense given Sony's current dire financial state, but the decision follows a number of damaging reports about corruption within FIFA and growing pressure on its sponsors to speak out.

The recent, unexpected and utterly delightful arrival of Valkyria Chronicles on PC has set me wondering about curious fate of Sega's franchise. It's a series that's garnered a passionate and loyal fan base thanks to the 2008 PS3 original, which won as many hearts with its colourful cast and timeless painterly aesthetic as it did minds with its quirky strategic action. Yet the chronicles of Valkyria seem to have played out in reverse and, through no fault of their own, suffered a demoralising downward spiral of devolution.

Despite the original earning its stripes as a worldwide release that shifted over a million copies, Valkyria Chronicles 2 received a sharp demotion. The shift to Sony's PSP may have made sense in its native Japan, where unabashed fans would relish the ad hoc multiplayer, but everywhere else it felt like a backward step that brought with it an inevitable drop in sales and a slew of technical constraints to boot. The third instalment never even made it to these shores. It's an inverse of the path this franchise deserved, and a waste of such big-hearted promise. After such an impressive start for the series, it was left to drift quietly into obscurity.

Valkyria Chronicles 2's arrival in 2010 was bittersweet, then. It was the sequel many had been hoping would materialise, but it on a platform already in decline. So, through strained smiles, we pointedly ignored the obvious fact that it was neither as attractive as its predecessor nor carrying all of its forebear's effortless charm. The PSP simply wasn't up to the task of depicting the delicate brush strokes and fine lines that allow the PS3 game to belie its age to this day. In trying to recreate that iconic look it lost much of its visual identity as once delicate details were mired in a muddy miasma of muted browns and greens. The variety of its environments was gone and, with it, some of the first game's grand scope and sense of scale. Most of this instalment took place in and around the grounds of the Lanseal Military Academy, which brought with it a change of personnel and the heavy funk of raging hormones and teenage angst.

PlayStation Now - a service that allows users to stream PS3 titles - will enter open beta for North Americans on Vita and PlayStation TV on 14th October, to coincide with that territory's launch of the PlayStation TV.

As detailed on the US PlayStation Blog, this open beta will include 150 PS3 titles that users will be able to stream onto the Vita and PlayStation TV - a $99.99 device that allows users to locally stream PS4 games and download select Vita, PSP and PS one classic titles.

Players can also play Vita games on the PlayStation TV by inserting a game card. It requires a DualShock 3 or 4 as a controller though - which some might find preferable to the Vita's Remote Play option as the handheld only has two shoulder buttons rather than four.

Citizens of Marin County, California can turn in their violent video games to the local government in exchange for ice cream.

Ben & Jerry's ice cream, to be exact.

As reported by the Marin Independent Journal, this is part of a new initiative by Marin County district attorney Ed Berberian. Berberian joined forces with Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream along with the Center for Domestic Peace to set up a drive in which locals can turn in both video games and toy guns to receive some sweet, sweet dairy treats.

Do you like quirky things? Do you like saving money? Good news! To celebrate 10 years of bringing weird and wonderful Japanese games to a wider audience, publisher Rising Star has announced an anniversary sale over on the PlayStation Store.

That means a commendably generous 70% off such cult hits as King of Fighters XIII, Harvest Moon, Half-Minute Hero and more. There are a couple of compilations in amongst the titles as well, plus something called Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God, which may well be the greatest name ever. PlayStation Plus subscriber still get their 10% off too.

Best of all, it means you can get the brilliantly odd Deadly Premonition (in its Director's Cut version) for £5.99, which is about the same price as a turkey, strawberry jam and cereal sandwich. So says Mr. Stewart.

UPDATE 07/08/2014 11.42pm: Former Duke Nukem IP-holder Apogee Software has shed a little light on what went down with the unreleased PSP version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass.

"An early alpha version of the game was submitted to the Library of Congress by Apogee as required for the copyrighting process," said Apogee co-founder and CCO Terry Nagy in a correspondence with Eurogamer. "Subsequently, Apogee decided not to release the game in 2011, even though we had a build submitted to Sony for final approval. This decision was not due to the loss of any rights by Apogee."

When asked why the PSP version of Duke Nukem: Critical Mass never got released, the developer declined to comment.

A settlement has just been agreed in a class action lawsuit brought against Sony at the time, that would see Sony offer $15m worth of digital goods as compensation to those affected.

On an individual level this amounts to a choice of an old PS3 or PSP game, or three months of free PlayStation Plus. The latter is easily the best option but you only qualify if you're not already a Plus subscriber. And you have to live in the US.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1683612Mon, 09 Jun 2014 10:43:00 +0100World's largest video game collection is being auctioned off

On 3rd December 2012, Buffalo, New York resident Michael Thommason made history by having the Guinness Book of World Records certify his gaming collection as the largest in existence. At the time it consisted of 10,607 games, though Thommason noted in a YouTube comment last November that it was nearly 12,000 titles strong.

Now, he's auctioning it all off.

Along with the games, the winner of this GameGavel auction will also receive the actual Guinness certificate as well as a lifetime subscription to Retro Magazine - which includes an autographed copy of its premiere issue featuring this very collection.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1681950Tue, 03 Jun 2014 15:32:00 +0100THQ sure left a lot of cool stuff in its former HQ

When Reddit user Soulessgingr's work relocated to a new building in Agoura Hills, California, he was delighted to see that it was actually the proverbial burial ground of former video game publisher THQ. Better yet, it still had a lot of cool memorabilia from the publisher's heyday.

Soulessgingr said he'd heard that all this paraphernalia was intentionally left behind as assets meant to make up for owed rent. "The building manager purchased all the stuff that was left and THQ also left some stuff (hardware mostly) because they owed a lot of money for back rent," the Reddit user said. He later added that another colleague verified that the building owner paid THQ for the sweet swag.

Aside from the cool, vaguely melancholy ambiance of working in a place haunted by totems of a once great video game publisher, Soulessgingr was given three of the left behind posters for Darksiders 2. "I was given Darksiders 2 posters a while ago because the CIO knew I loved that game when he did the initial tour," he explained. The lucky buck.

Sony's annual financial report is out and it ain't pretty. As expected, the company posted a billion-dollar overall loss (-$1.26bn/£746m). That's despite sales as a whole being 14.3 per cent up ($76bn/£45bn).

Sony's reason for the huge loss was, as has been publicly talked about before, restructuring - particularly selling off its PC business and splitting the TV business out into its own thing. Sony's been selling off headquarters in the US and Japan, selling shares and foregoing bonuses trying to offset these costs.

'But don't worry,' the company had seemed to suggest - this will be a one-off thing and pave the way for a brighter future. But while next year will be better, the company still expects to post a significant loss (-$487m/£290m). But by this time next year those costly restructuring processes will really actually be complete.

Back in 1991 the GameBoy was well into its swing, and all manner of new publishers were getting in on the action. Not wishing to miss a trick, Banpresto released a relatively small turn-based strategy game developed by a tiny studio by the name of winkysoft. It was called Super Robot Taisen (aka Super Robot Wars, or SRW for short).

Unlike other turn based strategy games such as chess, the pieces on this game's board stemmed from a separate long-running pantheon. Calling up on nearly half a century of pop culture mythos, the pieces came from various mecha anime.

Despite having "super robot" in the title, only some of the game's units were actually "super". This is because mecha are broken down into various types in anime, with the two main categories of "super" and "real".

UPDATE 01/04/2014: Half-Minute Hero's sequel, Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming, is slated for a Friday, 4th April release on Steam, publisher Marvelous AQL has announced.

The publisher also joked that it will be $999.99 with a 25 per cent discount available for those who own the first game. It then noted that not all of that information is true (check today's date). We're pretty confident the price is the only gag there while the rest of the information checks out.

Here's a new trailer celebrating Half-Minute Hero: The Second Coming's English-language debut.

Many have taken issue with Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes's steep price of £19.99 - £29.99, but Sony is sweetening the pot by allowing PSN pre-orders of the game to come with Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD.

Unfortunately, the PS4's EU PlayStation Store doesn't even have Ground Zeroes available to pre-order, so it looks like this offer is PS3-only - though we're checking with Sony to get confirmation that this isn't also coming to PS4.

All things considered, this is still a pretty sweet deal. Since Ground Zeroes is a direct sequel to Peace Walker, it's the game most vital to playing before this impending release. I found Peace Walker a noble experiment for the series and noted in my Metal Gear Solid HD Collection review that Peace Walker HD was "not quite as memorable or surprising as its console counterparts," but was "nevertheless a welcome change of pace that complements its console brethren well."

10 years ago today Capcom released the first Monster Hunter game. It launched in Japan for the PlayStation 2 as part of a new initiative from Capcom's Production Studio 1 designed to test the waters of online console gaming. It was a triumvirate that included cel-shaded racing game Auto Modellista, the multiplayer-focused Resident Evil: Outbreak and, of course, Monster Hunter. Capcom hoped at least one would sell a million copies, what the company considered then to be the mark of a hit title. One did.

The series exploded when it hit Sony's PlayStation Portable. Millions gathered at train stations and parks to play together over local wireless, hunting monsters, scoring loot, upgrading their characters. Monster Hunter became a Japanese social phenomenon and for Capcom, big business. Monster Hunter Freedom 3 for the PlayStation Portable is the fifth highest-selling Capcom game of all time, with 4.8m units sold. Monster Hunter 4, released last year in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS, is the seventh highest-selling Capcom game of all time, with 4m copies sold. And Monster Hunter Freedom Unite rounds out the series' dominance over Capcom's top 10 as the eighth highest-selling with 3.6m sold.

Now, 10 years after the release of the first game, Monster Hunter is Japan's Call of Duty. 28 million Monster Hunter games have been sold in the past decade, spread over some 28 titles. The release of a new Monster Hunter game is an annual event in Japan. Each year, thousands queue up outside shops in fevered anticipating. And each year, Monster Hunter's importance to Capcom grows, as more globally-renowned series, such as Resident Evil, falter.

Sony Computer Entertainment of America's president and CEO Jack Tretton is stepping down from his role with the company on 31st March, 2014.

According to Sony, this is due to a "mutual agreement" between both parties.

Tretton has been with SCEA since the branch of the company began in 1995, where Tretton played a pivotal role in bringing PlayStation to the west. In his time leading the company, Sony sold over 50 million PS2s in North America and over 1 million PS4s in the territory in the console's first day on store shelves.

After making the precarious decision to stick with PC development during the Famicom console boom, and again during the developer death knell of the mid-2000s, when Square Enix, Sega Sammy Holdings, and Namco Bandai were born of a scramble for assimilation, Nihon Falcom Corporation's most impressive achievement is probably managing to stay in business. Like a float on a tidal wave, the company has surfed 30 years of industry turmoil by staying small, sensible, and buoyant.

Recognised as pioneers of the Japanese role-playing game, when Nihon Falcom was registered in 1981 - its name inspired by the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs - it consisted only of its founder, Masayuki Kato. A computer technician smitten with the Apple 2 while working overseas in Thailand, Kato became one of Japan's first Apple distributors, opening retail store Computer Land Tachikawa under the Falcom company umbrella.

A hardcore boutique for like-minded computer buffs to hang out, drink coffee, and go full-nerd in the twilight era of bedroom programming that was the early 80s, Kato teamed up with one of the store's young patrons, Yoshio Kiya, and began experimenting with game development. They spent two years warming up with low-budget safe bets: astrology, golf, and a handful of erotic text adventures for NEC's PC-88, before finding their calling with Dragon Slayer in 1984; an action RPG before the genre had even earned a designation. The follow-up, Xanadu, remains Falcom's most successful title, selling 400,000 copies in a time when PC's were a prohibitively expensive commodity.

One of Japan's oldest video game developers and sadly lesser known in the west than the Final Fantasy Corporation, Nihon Falcom is a company credited as the architect of the JRPG. Founded by computer buff Masayuki Kato, Falcom cut its teeth on NEC's PC-88 in 1982 and stayed loyal to the PC gaming scene for nearly 25 years.

Famed for beautiful games and various innovations within the RPG genre, long-running series like Dragon Slayer, Falcom's former flagship, and Brandish, a dungeon crawler, have benefited from the company's typical affection for small details, sparkling visuals, and the audio wonders of the JDK Sound Team: an in-house unit responsible for several decades of magical soundtracks.

Today under control of president Toshihiro Kondo - a fan who landed a server technician role in 1998 after a chance meeting with Falcom's founder - the company has recently initiated a profitable love affair with Sony's handheld consoles. Falcom's current flagship title, Ys (a game that made its debut way back in 1987) has been given a deserved spotlight in the west thanks to XSEED's PSP localisations. An action RPG of lordly calibre and beneficiary of several inspired remakes, it's a series you can read all about in Eurogamer's recent in-depth article.

In its financial reports Sony lumps sales of all home PlayStation consoles together, so we don't have an updated figure for the PS4 (it was 4.2m as of 28th December 2013). However, we do know that PS4 and PS3 sales combined were for the quarter ending 31st December 2013 7.8m. Combined Vita and PSP sales for the quarter were 2m.

Sony's Game division, which looks after PlayStation, saw an impressive 64.6 per cent rise in sales year-on-year to $4.2bn. Why? Because of the launch of the PlayStation in Europe, North America and Latin America in November as well as the favourable impact of foreign exchange rates.

A group of dedicated fans have created an English language patch for the Japan-only PSP tactical RPG Valkyria Chronicles 3.

While the game was well-received in its native Japan, series publisher Sega refused to bring it to the west following disappointing sales of Valkyria Chronicles 2 and the general unpopularity of the PSP.

It's worth noting that the fan-made patch only works with the Valkyria Chronicles 3: Extra Edition (or VC3:E2 for short) for both the PSP and Vita. If used with the game's original release, the patch will still work somewhat, but there will be errors like voices getting switched around.

The business of second-hand video games - pre-owned, trade-ins, used games, whatever you want to call it - is mysterious. Shops make millions while developers and publishers shake their fists in rage. Or do they?

Ben Grant and Matt Precious are "magicians that have come out of the magic circle", they tell me. They ran GAME and Gamestation's colossal, thousand-store trade-in and pre-owned business for more than a decade. They know their stuff. Now they're ready to share it.

Not for nothing, mind you. They're plugging their new business, Trade In Detectives, at the same time. But it's worth a look. It's a website that compares trade-in game prices - the kind of index Precious used to employ someone full-time at GAME to produce, and even then he could only keep up with a top 20. "We scrape and obtain around 110,000 prices per day," says Grant. "I wish it existed when I was at bloody GAME!" adds Precious.

The gaming industry has wrapped up for Christmas and it's the familiar faces staking their claim for that coveted festive number-one spot.

In poll position, as always at this time of year, it's Call of Duty, according to the chart compiled by GfK Chart-Track. Last year's Christmas number-one was Black Ops 2.

Just behind Ghosts today is this year's FIFA game, then this year's Lego game, then this year's Battlefield game, then this year's Assassin's Creed game, then this year's Just Dance game, then this year's Need for Speed game and then, eventually, Grand Theft Auto 5, which comes around far less often. Will there be a cheeky discount to ram it up the festive pile in time for Christmas?

Sony will today bump up the number of PSPs and PlayStation Vitas that you can tie to your PlayStation account.

The amount will be increased from two to three during a period of maintenance this evening.

PlayStation Network will be down for anyone who hasn't recently logged in between 9am-2pm PST (5-10pm GMT), the US PlayStation blog reported. It's unclear if the maintenance will take place at a separate time for European countries.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1638062Tue, 03 Dec 2013 14:59:00 +0000Various US airlines now let you play games during takeoff

Virgin America has become the latest airline to allow passengers to play games during take-off, the company has announced. Other airlines that have recently granted this include: Delta, JetBlue, American Airlines, United Airlines, US Airways, Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Southwest Airlines. (Thanks, Polygon.)

For the longest time using electronics during takeoff was considered a no-no in the world of commercial aviation as it was rumoured that personal electronics could conflict with the plane's equipment and passengers would find themselves stranded on a desert island talking to volleyballs and running from polar bears.

This nonsense came to an end last month when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) realised this was bunk and determined that people could play Pokemon without it endangering the lives of all those around them. Of course, bureaucracy has a drudgerous way of working, and airlines were tasked with proving to the FAA that their particular fleet is immune to the witchcraft of the mobile phone.

As the autumn heavyweights enter the ring it's Ubisoft setting the pace, as Assassin's Creed 4 leaps to the top of the UK charts, leaving EA and Battlefield 4 with a cut eyebrow in second.

Mind you, Assassin's Creed 4 has been out since Tuesday; Battlefield 4 launched on Friday.

Neither game, however, managed to match the launch figures of their predecessor, GfK Chart-Track pointed out. AC3 and BF3 are still the fastest-selling instalments in their respective series. Perhaps that's down to the impending arrival of Microsoft and Sony's new consoles, on which both AC4 and BF4 will be released.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1628847Thu, 31 Oct 2013 10:03:00 +0000UK chart: Skylanders not as strong as last year

It's two weeks in a row for Grand Theft Auto 5 at the top of the UK video games chart, totalling three top-spots since launch, counted GfK Chart-Track.

FIFA 14, the game that briefly displaced Rockstar's record breaker, is second, holding off strong new challenger Skylanders: Swap Force (which we rather liked) in third. Swap Force sales are 35 per cent lower than predecessor Skylanders Giants' were last year. Has Disney Infinity (in 10th this week) left its mark?

Pokemon X and Y are pushed to fourth and fifth, respectively, and Sony's PS3-exclusive Beyond: Two Souls moves down a place to sixth.